Business NEWS

Which of the following would be more valuable to the organization: (1) investing in a new e-commerce site or (2) investing in some automation software that could improve the company’s procurement processes?

With the threat of the delta variant lurking, strict lockdowns have been reimposed in several countries, such as in Australia, in China, and in the Philippines. This caused companies to implementfull work-from-home (WFH) policyanew while others just extended their existing ones.

The pandemic has indeed accelerated digital transformation across the globe including that in the Philippines. With organizations implementing work-from-home, and consumers driving the rise of e-commerce and the widespread use of digital wallets, companies and organizations are accelerating their migration to digital applications and platforms.

We are in the global map again… for the working reasons. The Philippines is identified as the largest contributing country to the global plastic waste in the oceans. According to the recent report of Ocean Cleanup in the Journal Science Advances, the country’s 4,820 rivers emit356,371 MT (metric tons) of plastic wastes into the oceans per year.The rest are India with 126,513 MT year, Malaysia with 73,098 MT per year, and China with 70,707 MT year.

My Gen Z son had to physically go to a physical branch of one of the largest banks in the Philippines to reopen an account, only because his previous account, which he had been holding for several years, had been automatically closed because he placed all his money in an investment portfolio of the same bank. Obviously, this bank doesn’t see my son’s overall value as a customer, and instead treats him in silos. “This is totally crap,” said my son, who promised that he will eventually move his money to another bank that doesn’t have the same hassle.

Philippine health authorities temporarily suspended on April 8 the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine for people below 60 years of age to investigate reports of blood clots coming from overseas like the United Kingdom, after the European Medicines Agency found a “possible link” between the vaccine and blood clots.

It’s been said that 2020 is a lost year – when the pandemic drove the global economy into recession, when many countries locked down their communities, and when companies did some rethinking on how to conduct their businesses. The year 2020 was practically written off. But we observed that companies in 2020 responded differently to the global crisis andtook any of the four organizational responses to the global crisis.

Nowadays, one will often hear from businessmen and managers alike how difficult and tough it is to manage their companies and businesses. Understandably, they lament and complain of lackluster revenues, rising costs, or a plainly slow market due to the lockdowns. But what does it mean exactly when they say business is difficult?

The registration of online businesses in the Philippines skyrocketed to 75,876 as of September 2 from 1,753 recorded in January to March 15as more and more entrepreneurs conduct business via the internet due to strict lockdown restrictions imposed to stem the spread of COVID-19, according to the Department of Trade and Industry.

“You’re on mute!”. This is going to be the phrase of the year, as people all over the world adjust to the new way of communicating and conducting business using video-conferencing tools; and indeed, people are still adjusting.

The pandemic has truly disrupted our lives, organizations, and nations. Work-from home, social distancing, and quarantines have become the new normal. With the bleak prospect of a universal vaccine in the foreseeable future, the World Health organization and nations are already singing the same song – we have to learn to co-exist with the coronavirus. As a result, technology and innovation have been responding to help people adapt to the new ways of life and business.